NBC vs. the remote

Beginning tonight during "Will & Grace," the network will begin showing one-minute movies during commercial breaks in an effort to keep viewers engaged -- and paying attention to the messages of sponsors.

The movies, or vignettes, will come in two installments, the first a 30- second scene which ends in a cliffhanger, while the second half delivers a 30- second resolution.

Just when the two short blocks will air is NBC's little secret. The network is even mum about whether the resolution will be shown during "Will & Grace" or later in prime time.

"The hope is to create an exciting and innovative and otherwise cool movie in two parts -- building to a question or suspense and resolve it and complete the story," said Paris Barclay, a two-time Emmy award-winning director who brought the concept of short, interstitial films to NBC and who is the writer and director of two of the 10 brief entertainments that have been completed for the network.

"The idea is to be talked about at the water cooler," he said.

Advertising agencies said earlier this year that they are prepared to spend as much as $9.3 billion on prime-time commercial air time this season, a portion of which will be ignored by viewers who leave the room or flip the dial among 120 or more stations. With technology such as digital video recorders that allow viewers to instantly skip advertisements, many of those commercial messages will be electronically zapped.

Advertisers and programmers have long wrestled with the challenge of keeping viewers' attention.

Barclay took the idea, which he called at the time "60-second sagas," to another network 13 years ago and was turned down. This time, an NBC executive bought into the idea within two minutes of a presentation, said Barclay. He said that producing the shorts is to borrow from what writers of four-act dramas have long done -- keep viewers curious as to what will happen next.

Advertising research shows that the first andlast commercials in agroup of television commercials are recalled by more viewers while those in the middle suffer, said Erwin Ephron of Ephron Consultancy in New York, an advertising consultant.

"That is the pattern and it is exacerbated by the increase in commercial time," said Ephron.

The first one-minute movie, seen tonight, is written and directed by Steven Antin and features the Pussycat Dolls, a Los Angeles cabaret act. In it,

the dolls are performing on a train -- an homage to the Orient Express, Antin said -- and unwittingly become involved in a diamond heist.

"It will have a beginning, a middle and an end, the same structure, no matter how long or how short," Antin said.

"Some of this is advertising seeing and dealing with what is coming down the road," a reference to commercial-eliminating technology, said David Stewart, professor of marketing and deputy dean of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

"We are not far from that being fairly standard technology, when it becomes cheaper and people see they have the opportunity to control their own viewing," Stewart said.

He added, "We know that people would like to be able to schedule things they want to watch."

The 60 seconds is being taken out of network time, not commercial break time. Other networks are very likely watching the experiment closely.

"People are clamoring to do these movies," director Antin said. "It's such a great medium. Every director and writer wants the opportunity to tell a little story and have someone pay for it."